Farmer's - a question

So, a question to those who appear to have all the answers :)

So our poorly earning farmers, many devoid of formal qualifications, ship out and get some of the abundance of well paying jobs elsewhere (!!!!!!) who looks after and maintains the mountainous, inhospitable countryside that tourists just love to drive through and look at from their car windows as they sail past? And for what incentive?
Not too many plains around here, that's for sure. You'd have to decimate wildlife and hedgerows to create them in some of the more fertile land.

Honestly, I think some of the posters on this thread would have wet their knickers if they'd been forced to cope with the conditions we had last weekend, and we don't even have livestock.
 
I suppose, C_C, that if we'd never had sheep on our secondary land, then we wouldn't have had the ecology which we now enjoy, and most seem to want to maintain. We'd have virtually impenetrable wastelands, by comparison, but then to replace the existing wild life, we'd probably still have bears and wolves. We'd have less deer, with increased and larger predators, and then we'd still have those who'd moan 'cause we wanted to shoot the wolves which were killing our calves!

Thinking about it, I suppose that it's sheep which have laid our hill ground bare, or at least contributed to it, and where we have few grouse, that's because the heather, upon which the bird depends, has been replaced by a rather rank grass, though even then, all native species seem to prosper.

It's all a matter of balance. Without the Herdwickes of Cumbria, Beatrice Potter would have had to find another passion. Without the Blackface yows of Scotland, Scott would have found another subject.

Back to those who farm in a small way, those who can't maintain a family upon their insufficient earnings, so often the wives, and even the husbands, have secondary incomes to augment their meagre incomes. With the disastrous times which many are now having, their secondary jobs are what allow them to continue. I admire their fortitude, as most of us do.

Alec.
 
Blimey, this thread has gone from why didn't farmers get their sheep in before it snowed to the end of farming as we know it....all in a couple of days !!
 
OK I haven't read all of this but Alec an excellent reply.
Cpt, if when the small farms are all closed down, as you seem to eagerly await, then who is going to look after your countryside for you so you can carry on playing in it when you feel like venturing past the end of your drive?

I seem to have missed a few posts there...oops, blame the wine! I have to confess I have just got home from all day at Tesco (much to the disgust of farming friends) and the other days I clean houses and work at a livery yard, this is meant to be holiday and 'fun' money but this year is going to pay the final instalment on the tractor, farming is a luxury lifestyle!
 
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Small farmers, called crofters up here in Scotland, are the life blood of the Highlands. Certainly, they may be uneconomical but the crofter is also the one who drives the school bus, delivers the mail, runs the local shop, etc. Without the land as an anchor, the crofter would be working in Australia, Canada, or New Zealand.

I used to manage a 66,000 acre crofting estate and had to visit those who would not agree to a rent increase or some improvement. I visited one old lady who did no even have a road to her house. She explained that she had been a matron in a big London teaching hospital, one son was a consultant surgeon at another hospital, a second son was the captain of an oil tanker, and so it went on for every member of her extensive family.

Small farms may be uneconomical in terms of livestock production, but they have produced countless people who have gone on to do great things in the outside world. Perhaps they don't produce a lot of food, but what people! I assume cptraves would prefer an unpopulated wilderness.
 
cpt would probably prefer nice small grass fields with well maintained hedges and hunt jumps. Oh, who provides those now!?
 
Clodagh said:
cpt would probably prefer nice small grass fields with well maintained hedges and hunt jumps. Oh, who provides those now!?
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It really is pointless trying to engage in a sensible debate on an internet form, isn't it? My personal preferred passtime has absolutely no relevance to the future of farming. Accepting that there are welfare issues even in good farming doesn't in any way mean that i hate farmers or farming. Pointing out that small farms are unviable businesses does not mean that I want them to be that way, or that I want them to disappear.,

But of course it's much more fun if we all pretend otherwise, isn't it :D ?
 
Wait, wait, wait...

What happens to all the animals when the farmer takes the hedges to market? :confused:

Do those cute little strips of land around the outside of the field keep them in? :D
 
Dry Rot said:
Small farmers, called crofters up here in Scotland, are the life blood of the Highlands. Certainly, they may be uneconomical but the crofter is also the one who drives the school bus, delivers the mail, runs the local shop, etc.
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Not sure which part of Scotland you're from (possibly the Highlands since you mentioned it), but I've lived here all my life and have never heard a farmer being referred to as a crofter, they're simply farmers! All the farmers I know (and yes I am surrounded by them as I live in the middle of nowhere), are purely farmers. I've never met one who also has another job...!

I haven't read all the stuff since the first page of this, so in relation to that - I don't really get why farmers down south hadn't brought their sheep down onto lower land and certainly given them plenty of food. We get bad snow up here, yet I've not heard of any sheep getting buried and dying...
 
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cptrayes said:
can anyone tell me where I can buy skimmed milk from a cow still nursing its calf, please?

My place.... Also butter, cream, soft cheese, and a semi hard cheese (oooeerrr) but although I am expanding I could never do it this was on a large scale. Also raise rose veal on their dams.

Why not do a "Cow op" like they do in the US? Buy a cull cow or two from a dairy with a group of like minded people, share costs and chores but all have the benefit of fresh dairy raised in an ethical way you are in control of.... Just food for thought?
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cptrayes said:
The other thing that seems to be being completely ignored is that we don't need this food. Meat is a luxury, not a necessity. No-one has a God given right to make a profit from it. Sheep are more effectively farmed on the plains in larger numbers. Hill farming is inefficient and ineffective. It keeps the countryside looking as we have come to expect it, but the world would not end if sheep farming did, it would just look different. Not worse, not better, just different.
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.......

[COLOR="BlYour world would not end, but the landscape would change so dramatically that the wildlife currently enjoying its life on these hills, would be lost!, with no sheep grazing rare plants would not thrive, scrub, willow , blackthorn, and long rank grass would replace any wild plants, flowers, , and , if there was no "meat" farming at all anywhere in this country, the countryside would look worse, and in fact could well spell the end, no wild flowers no honey bee, no honey bee, no flowers, plants dont get pollinated so dont reproduce. So no meat, no plants, no food! ;)
"][/COLOR]
 
MagicMelon said:
Not sure which part of Scotland you're from (possibly the Highlands since you mentioned it), but I've lived here all my life and have never heard a farmer being referred to as a crofter, Google "Crofter", and then you'll have a better understanding. ;) they're simply farmers! All the farmers I know (and yes I am surrounded by them as I live in the middle of nowhere), are purely farmers. I've never met one who also has another job...! You live amongst the privileged, it would seem.

I haven't read all the stuff since the first page of this, so in relation to that - I don't really get why farmers down south hadn't brought their sheep down onto lower land and certainly given them plenty of food. We get bad snow up here, yet I've not heard of any sheep getting buried and dying... Patently, you live in a different world from others, and there was me thinking that Aberdeen was Gaelic for hypothermia!
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Alec.
 
Sadly an awful lot of people have a stock answer whenever anyone claims that their working conditions and pay are not adequate or appropriate, "get a different job" It is often trotted out to those of us who work with the uncuddly vulnerable members of society, now it is being trotted out to the farmers. There is usually no suggestion of who would then do the job' just put up or shut up, or maybe get a job in finance, because of course that will solve all the worlds ills!
 
YorksG said:
....... an awful lot of people have a stock answer whenever anyone claims that their working conditions and pay are not adequate or appropriate, "get a different job" It is often trotted out to those of us who work with the uncuddly vulnerable members of society, now it is being trotted out to the farmers. .......
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I sometimes wonder if this forum's critics, of those who farm, aren't more concerned with the posters who they are carping about, than the subject itself. Their opinions are of little worth, either way. ;)

Alec.
 
Alec Swan said:
I sometimes wonder if this forum's critics, of those who farm, aren't more concerned with the posters who they are carping about, than the subject itself. Their opinions are of little worth either way. ;)

Alec.
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Everyone's opinions are of equal worth....yours are no more valid than anyone elses....apart from in your own mind of course !
 
bonny said:
Everyone's opinions are of equal worth....yours are no more valid than anyone elses....apart from in your own mind of course !
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But if those opinions are blatantly, said with no actual knowledge behind them then they are not worth a jot!
 
Alec Swan said:
I sometimes wonder if this forum's critics, of those who farm, aren't more concerned with the posters who they are carping about, than the subject itself. Their opinions are of little worth, either way. ;)

Alec.
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I am quite saddend that that is how you read my post, and that that is your view of my opinion..
 
Fii said:
But if those opinions are blatantly, said with no actual knowledge behind them then they are not worth a jot!
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Not true, we actually have no idea about each others experiences or knowledge, beyond what we write on here. Everybody is of equal worth
 
martlin said:
What a sad, sad thread it has become :(
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True. I always have hope that the general population understand farming, and the crazy, uninformed uneducated views of 'how it should be' reside in the further reaches of irrationality. This has not been the case, in this thread anyway. Sad is what it is unfortunately.
 
bonny said:
Not true, we actually have no idea about each others experiences or knowledge, beyond what we write on here. Everybody is of equal worth
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Well yes that is true, people do lie about there "experience" or big up what they have done in life, but you can usually tell by what people write, how much they really know! ;)

i think you have to live the life of a farmer before making sweeping statements , and by that i mean really live it, not just for a few weeks of lambing, but for years, with the financial worry, the loss, the weather, all the things that go on in your life now, all tied up in a few acres of land filled with the animals that can make or break your existence! A herd can be wiped out by Tb, or foot and mouth, all your lambs could be born dead, or die hours after birth, there are fences to mend, ditches to dig, hedges to lay, walls to re-pare, barns to re pare, machinery that breaks, ....this list is endless and i dont wish to bore you, but looking in from the outside you only see a fraction of what goes on!!
 
MagicMelon said:
Not sure which part of Scotland you're from (possibly the Highlands since you mentioned it), but I've lived here all my life and have never heard a farmer being referred to as a crofter, they're simply farmers! All the farmers I know (and yes I am surrounded by them as I live in the middle of nowhere), are purely farmers. I've never met one who also has another job...!

I haven't read all the stuff since the first page of this, so in relation to that - I don't really get why farmers down south hadn't brought their sheep down onto lower land and certainly given them plenty of food. We get bad snow up here, yet I've not heard of any sheep getting buried and dying...
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Not sure when Aberdeenshire became part of the Highlands either!!!:D

It seems this thread has collected everyone on HHO who wants to have a fight or disagree. I'm off.
 
amymay said:
I don't think so, Dry Rot. Magic Melon simply brings us back to the original question.
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Don't think what?

Only last winter there were several cases of livestock buildings collapsing with the weight of snow in Aberdeenshire. Drifting snow needs wind or it just settles so losses were mercifully few.<duh>

I lived in the county next door to Aberdeenshire (Banffshire), so also N E Scotland, for ten years (my neighbour was a crofter!) and one winter we had 26 inches of snow. Another year we got four inches on the 4th June and roads were blocked. But it didn't drift. No wind.

If Magic Melon was not so obviously ignorant she could simply do a Google. Better to keep your mouth shut and appear a fool than to open it and dispel all doubt:

Despite its challenges, crofting is important to the Highlands and Islands. At March 2002 there were 17,721 crofts, and 12,000 to 13,000 crofters (some crofters have the tenancy of more than one croft or there is croft absenteeism where tenancies are held but crofts are not farmed). About 30,000 family members lived in crofting households, or around 10% of the population of the Highlands and Islands. Crofting households represented around 30% those in the rural areas of the Highlands, and up to 65% of households in Shetland, the Western Isles and Skye. There were 770,000 hectares under crofting tenure, roughly 25% of the agricultural land area in the Crofting Counties. Crofters had around 20% of all beef cattle (120,000 head) and 45% of breeding ewes (1.5 million sheep).
 
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